Gun violence continues to be a public health crisis throughout America, and a top priority for many Chicagoans who are pressing local governments to do more to increase public safety. As we’ve reported in the past, the City, County, and State are leveraging America Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to invest in sustainable violence reduction. In 2023, it is estimated that approximately $175M in public funding will go to violence prevention and intervention, a significant leap from the $10M spent in 2017.

This increase in funding over a short period of time has created monumental shifts in the violence prevention and intervention ecosystem for both grantmakers, and those who are delivering services at the ground-level. To meet this challenge, Civic Consulting Alliance is supporting multiple interconnected clients to ensure quick and effective scaling of these concerted violence reduction efforts.

Clients featured:

• Illinois Department of Human Services’ Office of Firearm Violence Prevention
• Intergovernmental Violence Prevention Partnership
• Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities
• Civic Committee Public Safety Task Force

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Standing up the Office of Firearm Violence Prevention at the Illinois Department of Human Services

Civic Consulting Alliance’s experience in violence prevention coordination, combined with our consulting capabilities in organizational design and data analytics, put our organization in a unique position to quickly stand up the new Office of Firearm Violence Prevention (OFVP) for the Illinois Department of Human Services.

The pandemic exacerbated existing disparities that have led to increased gun violence across the country, including in Illinois. The Reimagine Public Safety Act of 2021 aims to take a public health approach to violence reduction by making targeted investments in disproportionately impacted communities. This legislation called for the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) to create an Office of Firearm Violence Prevention to manage the new funding that would flow to Community Violence Intervention (CVI), youth development and high-risk youth intervention organizations, in communities with the highest levels of violence .

In early 2022, we developed a short-term strategic roadmap to stand up the OFVP and position them to quickly distribute $250M in violence prevention funding where it is needed most. To do so, Civic Consulting Alliance helped the new leaders at OFVP articulate a vision, goals, and functional areas of focus to lay the foundation for the long-term work of the office.

With the foundational organizational design elements like vision, goals, and staffing needs in place, Civic Consulting Alliance pivoted to support implementation of OFVP’s most pressing priorities. In addition, we provided data analysis of initial Reimagine Public Safety Act investments and violence data to help OFVP understand their funding decisions at the community level.

Now communities with the highest level of violence are seeing increased funding. In total, OFVP will invest $100M per year over the next two years in 22 Chicago community areas and 15 communities across greater Illinois.

“Civic Consulting Alliance has been a true partner in supporting the foundational work of the Office of Firearm Violence Prevention. They ensured that our office was set up to achieve the goals of the Reimagine Public Safety Act, and brought critical capabilities in data analysis to support our ongoing efforts to ensure funding is distributed in the communities most impacted by gun violence.” – Chris Patterson, Assistant Secretary IDHS Office of Firearm Violence Prevention, Illinois Department of Human Services

Intergovernmental Violence Prevention Partnership update: coordinating data alignment with pro bono partner Blue Cottage of CannonDesign

The work of the Office of Firearm Violence Prevention is part of the larger coordination that Civic Consulting Alliance advances through the Intergovernmental Violence Prevention Partnership. This project aligns violence prevention funding made possible by the American Rescue Plan Act to accelerate collaborative, systemic approaches to violence prevention—to ensure that these resources advance real change and safer communities.

In our March 2022 newsletter, Accelerating Collaborative & Systemic Approaches to Violence Reduction, we outlined our processes to align the City, County, and State’s strategies to maximize the impact of the unprecedented public funds available through ARPA to substantially and sustainably reduce gun violence. Now that funding pathways are established and money is flowing to grantees, we moved into a new phase that focused on aligning data across funders.

We tapped into the data expertise from our pro bono partner, Blue Cottage, to build a dashboard that empowers government partners to share data on violence prevention investments. Through this engagement, Blue Cottage drove work to:

• Combine data sets from City, County, and State stakeholders into a clean data set that can be compared across entities.
• Develop data visualizations to answer specific stakeholder questions relating to the need for violence interventions, funding sources, grant-receiving organizations, and geography.
• Pilot a process and tool that stakeholders can use to replicate the analysis independently for future awards.

The data alignment is now benefiting both funders and grantees. Today, all four governmental entities have agreed on common regular reporting metrics for Community-Based Violence Intervention (CVI) and a common reporting template for grantees. They now have visibility across the violence prevention initiatives to understand overlaps and gaps in funding strategies. Grantees (who historically have had to submit several different reports to each granting governmental agency) will benefit from a reduced burden of data collection and reporting burden, so they can focus on their service delivery.

Our work continues

We recently helped host a roundtable to align on capacity-building supports for CVI organizations that brought together private funders together with the public intergovernmental partnership, and have identified several initiatives that are well-positioned for immediate action. A new phase of work will plan for an optimized, future state of capacity building that services all CVI providers by leveraging the unique capabilities of the public and private partners.

Enhancing the sustainability of violence prevention funding

Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities (PSPC) is a coalition of more than 50 foundations and funders, working together to identify and support community-led, evidence-based solutions that public institutions can scale as part of a comprehensive approach to addressing gun violence. Since its inception in 2016, Civic Consulting Alliance has supported PSPC to drive a collective $140M toward its goal to prevent and reduce violence.

Over the past year, we have been working closely with the leadership team to transition the organization to a sustainable backbone structure with its own staff headed by an Executive Director.

We are beyond thrilled to celebrate that Esther Franco-Payne has joined PSPC as its first Executive Director in December 2022. Prior to joining the organization, Esther was the long-time Executive Director of Cabrini Green Legal Aid; she has also had senior leadership roles at the Public Welfare Foundation and the Illinois Justice Project, among others. Esther is passionate about equitably reducing violence in Chicago and the interview process made it clear that she is the right person for the job. We thank Lantern Partners for their pro bono support of the hiring process, as well as critical support from the Civic Consulting Alliance staff.

Career Opportunity: PSPC is hiring an Associate Director who will serve as a thought partner and be at the center of the day-to-day work to help lead and manage the coalition of 50 funders, engage with community partners, and grow the field of violence reduction.

Building a Public Safety Task Force for the business community

To help address urgent concerns about gun violence in our City, our affiliate, Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, recently created a Public Safety Task Force.  This task force will help the business community better understand the gun violence issue, learn best practices, define a clear role for the business community, and contribute constructively to public dialogue.

Chaired by Jim Crown, the Public Safety Task Force began meeting in Fall 2022 to identify a set of short, medium, and long-term strategies for the business community to support. The Task Force will collaborate with the City of Chicago and other governmental entities, community-based violence prevention programs, research and philanthropic communities, and other stakeholders to build partnerships in pursuit of ambitious, but realistic goals to make Chicago a safer, stronger, and healthier place to live, work and do business. Alongside pro bono partner BCG, we are supporting the design, launch, and initial strategy development for the Task Force.